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AN AFTERNOON IN THE LIFE OF A POET
By Quentin Smith
Thumbed down, the wheels unlock
In my pen.
I write in the face of the window,
Through the valleys of the paperthrown shadows
Write down on the smooth ex-timber,
On the ruins of the lost battle of conservation,
Write down in the void-dark of this room,
I write?
?Look, the snow swirls,
The knarled branches climb the sky,
The trees are stopped in their motion
Beyond the clouds, stopped lifeless
On the frozen ground.?
Now, I have written;
I will write again of crumpled leaves,
Of the useless lamp on this desk,
Of the glare of luminous gray
Between the bars of pane that angle
Down the glare, flattened across
The mahogany polish of this wood.
I shall scrawl the name of nothing
Across the white blood of the forest.
And then I will stand and lock my pen
And cross the sill of the black door.
Written 1973
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